Many worldwide road systems require the payment of tolls for passing vehicular traffic. Conventionally, these tolls were paid in cash, and a driver of a vehicle would have to stop, often repeatedly, at toll booths in order to pay the toll. This necessarily results in traffic delays as vehicles are forced to stop and form queues in order to pay. These traffic delays result in increased travel time and passenger frustration. Furthermore, the stop-and-go nature of the traffic jams adds wear and tear to vehicle components such as brakes, and requires increased amounts of gas, which increases both pollution levels and the travel costs associated with the journey. The same problem exists for vehicles that have to pay to enter any designated area for which a fee is required, and extends to situations that do not require a vehicle, such as a person who must wait in a queue to gain entrance to a theater for which a fee is charged, or to an area where a security check is necessary and entry is restricted to authorized people.
In recent years, automated toll systems and other systems authorizing entry into a particular region have been developed in an attempt to alleviate some of these problems. These automated toll systems generally implement Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology and require a vehicle or person to be equipped with a unique physical device such as a transponder designed to receive a specific signal and transmit a specific reply. These transponders are separate physical devices used only for a single purpose such as automatic toll collection, and a user of these devices must purchase the transponder. They are also normally semi-passive devices that require a power source such as a battery that must be periodically replaced. Furthermore, if a person uses more than one vehicle, either a different transponder is required for each vehicle, or the transponder must be moved between vehicles. Additionally a transponder will only work on systems with which it is compatible, and may therefore become useless if a driver crosses state, provincial, or national boundaries, or otherwise uses a road covered by a different RFID network, for example.
Conventional automatic toll collection systems and methods such as these typically do not require that the vehicle come to a complete stop. However, they still require that the vehicles slow down significantly, for example from a standard highway speed of 65 mph down to 15 mph. Furthermore, due to limitations of this technology, the vehicles still must form a queue and pass through single lane toll booths to pass within a few meters of a device such as a RFID reader in order for this device to properly receive a signal from the transponder in a vehicle. These forced lane changes and required decelerations increase the possibility of vehicular accidents that can result in property damage or serious bodily injury. As a result, traffic flow and associated inefficiencies and dangers remain severely and negatively affected by these automated toll collection procedures. Other existing systems and methods also require that the person or vehicle reduce speed, alter the direction of travel, or form a queue.